


o what can ail thee knight at arms

by thats_vexing



Category: Atlantis (UK TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:54:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thats_vexing/pseuds/thats_vexing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People who had been born and died centuries before he was even thought of were alive and thriving before his very eyes. A lost city – not just that, a mythological lost city – surrounded him, hot and dusty and very, very real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	o what can ail thee knight at arms

**Author's Note:**

> Written about the time that episode 2 or 3 aired - it is becoming a bit dated so I decided to post sooner than later.

Jason shifted uncomfortably.  His eyes felt dry and tired but his brain would not switch off. It would not stop buzzing, as he kept musing over this bizarre situation he found himself in. People who had been born and died centuries before he was even thought of were alive and thriving before his very eyes. A lost city – not just that, a  _mythological_  lost city – surrounded him, hot and dusty and very, very real.

Even if he did find his father, he had no conceivable means of getting home, not when he had so little idea of how he’d ended up here in the first place. Perhaps there was no way home.

He fidgeted again, freezing when he heard the man on the floor shift in his sleep, but Pythagoras didn’t wake up. The young mathematician (he still can’t get over that) was kind enough to offer Jason his bed to sleep in. Unfortunately, Jason was far more accustomed to his comfy mattress back home, rather than a sack full of straw. He wasn’t ungrateful, of course, but the scratchy material, the humidity still in the air despite it being late at night and the smell that clung to anything and everything kept reminding him of how completely out of his depth he really was.

He jumped when a disgruntled voice came from the floor. “Stop thinking so loudly, I can hear you in my dreams.”

Jason took his chance to yank out the piece of straw digging into the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he mumbled, staring resolutely at the ceiling and willing himself to feel sleepy.

Pythagoras fell silent for a long moment. “What is it?”

Jason considered his options. Attempting to convince anyone that he was from the future hardly helped his case. Every day, he lied through his teeth so that he wouldn’t stand out, but had still received a small number of death sentences in a short period of time. He was already considered to be completely ignorant by most everyone he came across, and didn’t really want to prove it. He went for the vague option. “I can’t fit in here.”

“You’ll settle in.” Pythagoras blurted, making Jason look at him questioningly. “Don’t worry, there are others who know as little as you. Mostly children. And morons.”

Jason groaned quietly at the jibe. “Look, these things just passed me by, somehow.”

“Knowledge of something will only get you so far.” Pythagoras replied cryptically. Jason felt the mattress dip as Pythagoras used it to pull himself up to sitting; when he turned his head, the man was looking at him intensely, far too alert for the early hours of the morning. “You have far greater virtues. Courage, loyalty, determination.” Pythagoras looked away, picking at the fraying seam of the blanket he was sleeping on. “They are worth so much more than knowing what each god likes for breakfast.” And as quickly as he appeared, he was gone, lying with his back to Jason. “Go to sleep, Jason.”  
  
Jason mulled what Pythagoras had said for a few minutes and found himself blissfully distracted from thoughts of a miserable existence in a supposedly fictional city. “Thank you,” he finally said, but the other man was already asleep.


End file.
